
On my main’s server, I’ve been running PUGs pretty much daily for the last few weeks. The time just isn’t right to form Cold Comfort the guild it seems, so I’ve resolved to try again closer to the release of Cataclysm, when there is bound to be a fair amount of shakeup and re-rolling.
Standards
As any regular reader will be aware, I have reasonable but strict standards for the people I play with. I’m not going to tell a tank that they need 35k buffed HP to do Naxxramas, or that you have to have surpass 4k dps to join an Onyxia-10 PUG, but if I invite you to my group for Trial of the Champion and you fail more than once to avoid Radiance when fighting Eadric, then I’m not going to group with you again. The record of failures I’ve observed in one fight was 11 spread among 3 people.
I use the excellent addon Do I Know You? to keep track of such people because it instantly tells me when someone whispers me if I’ve marked them as negative in the past. I track more than just people who don’t meet my standards: trade spammers, griefers, people who have caused loot problems, people who ditch on groups and especially that bloody Death Knight who won’t shut up about how the Dragonball-Z game is available on PS3 but not on XBox-360 all get on the list.
Over time, patterns start to emerge with regard to the guild tags of people on my list. On my main server, two guilds in particular are responsible for a disproportionate number of negative entries, and as such I won’t accept invites from members of those two guilds. It’s not a foregone conclusion that any group I join started by someone from the two is going to go poorly, but I’ve wasted enough time in the past and play roles that are in enough demand that I’m not robbing myself of opportunities by doing so.
If a guild on a realm gets a reputation for actively antagonising the other members of the realm, the decision not to group with them is pretty obvious. Has the guild been proven to harbor ninja looters? Don’t group with them. Did they transfer in to steal a server first from a home grown guild? Don’t group with them. Simple.
The position I take on the smaller stuff – just not being a good player - is one that I seem to take a bit more seriously than others. I want to play with skilled people. If your guild is made up of people that tend to end up on my “do not group with” list, the impression I get is that you recruit for numbers, not for skill.
Is this fair? Should guilds be responsible for their members’ actions, and what, if any actions by a guild member outside of a guild event reflect on the guild?
It’s my $15 a Month
We all pay our $15 / £9 / €13 per month to play WoW, so shouldn’t we be able to do whatever we want? Why should I have to conform to a playstyle or set of rules that I don’t like just to stay in my guild? There’s a nearly year old post on Fel Fire that is still a good read on this subject. In essence, your guild can’t force you to do anything, but they can say “these are the requirements for continuing to be a member – break them and you’re out”.
So, when leading or joining a guild, it’s a good idea to be clear on what is and is not tolerated. I touched on this more specifically a few weeks ago; in the same way as guilds tend to gloss over the bigotry issue with terms like “respect your guildmates” they gloss over other unwanted behaviour with terms like “respect the members of the realm”. Use words and like “respect” that have different meanings for different people and you’re just setting yourself up for an argument when someone crosses the line you’ve drawn in your mind but is still far from it in theirs.

